Well, the time for me to leave Minnesota for our new adventure begins soon. On Sunday afternoon I'll be catching a plane to Washington, DC to begin my training for the Foreign Service. In these few short days there's a lot to accomplish. I seriously cannot believe how quickly time has passed since I first got "the call." I joke that every day brings about a new logistical task to accomplish. I didn't think it was so funny when all of the planning and action wore me out to the point of getting a cold! How can I be sick when I've go so much to do?!?! Oh well, I guess this will be good practice for learning to roll with the punches... I'm sure there will be much of that in my new job. What's left to do this week? Well, I tie up the last loose ends for work tomorrow; I have to finish putting out my personal affects (the things I want access to in DC but am not taking with me on the plane) for the movers to pick up on Friday; I'm trying to have one last nice dinner with Steph before we spend a large amount of time apart; brunch with Steph's family; and a birthday party for my twin nieces turning 1 and their 3 year old sister. It is definitely going to be a full end of the week and I'm sure I'll blink and Sunday will be here. I've heard the first two weeks of training are fairly intensive, so I'm not crossing my fingers for things to slow down anytime soon.
Since we've been sharing the good news that I've been accepted into the Foreign Service, many people have been asking me about what I'm going to be doing as a FSO and what the training consists of. I wanted to direct you to a couple of really good explanations of what the future holds for me and for Steph and me as a couple. As for the career part, I was accepted into the Foreign Service under the Public Diplomacy cone (job track). The blogger. The Hegemonist is in the process of explaining what all five of the Foreign Service cones are and what a career within those cones looks like depending on your time in the diplomatic corps. I thought his description of the Public Diplomacy cone was particularly good, and you can read it by clicking here.
Starting on March 4th (the first two days in DC are spent handling employment processing), I will begin my training as a Foreign Service officer as a student in the A-100 class. The class, named after the room it was first held in at the State Department back in 1924, consists of seven weeks and is chock full of the general diplomatic training any new FSO will need. I've heard it consists of many different things from etiquette, to American policy, to public speaking, and basic skills necessary for living and working abroad. There's a fairly generic description of the course on Wikipedia. I've linked to it here. The best description I've found thus far though is a firsthand account written by a FSO who took the course back in 2004. While some of the days have changed, I'm guessing this is most likely what my next seven weeks will look like. Mike Edwards is the author of this recap (from WorldAdventurers.com), and you can read his accounts here.
I hope that this information is interesting and helpful to you that are curious about what we'll be doing over the coming months. Its exciting to know that some of it is a mystery. I look forward to sharing my own accounts through the blog here and to let you all know what is going on. I'll be sure to keep my posts as often as possible. If you have any questions along the way, feel free to use the askablogr feature on the sidebar of the blog where it says "ask Brian a question." Well, its off to bed for me as tomorrow is another full day!
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